“Sure,” he replied, pulling his jeans up and buckling his belt. “I left my cup in the foyer. Be right back.”
He would make it to the end of the hall before the world blew apart.
Chapter 14
Matt was in the field investigating a murder at Von Braun Spaceport that morning when the fateful call came in.
It was one of those cases that blurred the lines, as typically anything that occurred on spaceport property fell under Authority jurisdiction, but they didn’t want this one. And anything they didn’t want, they conveniently dumped it off on the already overloaded Zone Patrol.
The victim had been found in a refuse pod, the kind used on the Grand Orbital and the shipyards. These containers are filled with trash, compacted, refilled and compacted again, with the cycle continuing until they can’t hold any more garbage. Once packed full, small shuttles are dispatched to swap them out, and the trash is brought to Earth to be recycled.
Finding a body at, or around, Von Braun was nothing new. After all, this was the domain of the Hawkins Gang. Not only that, but you had elements of the Lunar and Martian syndicates that operated out of the port, moving contraband and drugs through. Behind the dazzling polyglass and gleaming hybristeel, there was a dark, seamy underbelly the tourists never saw.
“What we got?” Burlington asked, climbing out of his Rocket-Aire, his body sore and weary. Matt had been unable to sleep the night before, remaining at Stella’s apartment in the futile hope she’d show up there. Nursing a large black coffee, he listened with no small amount of disinterest as the Trooper in charge caught him up.
Still, what was unusual about this murder was that the victim owned the trash pod. In fact, that was his thing: garbage. He’d been ID’ed as Brendan Seales, owner of Hi-Flite Services, a fancy name for a company contracted to handle waste management duties for suborbital facilities.
“Seales?” Matt’s brow furled, that name sounded familiar. Where had he heard it before?
“Yessir,” the ZiP replied. “Age thirty-eight, married with three kids.”
“Spouse notified?”
“We’re in the process of contacting him now, sir.”
“Good!” Matt was still thumbing mentally through the files in his head. He knew he should know that name. He hated being distracted. Damnit, Stella! Where are you when I need you. If there were any dirt on the guy, she would’ve known instantly. She was a walking crime data center.
The trooper was continuing as they walked through the yellow crime scene hologram. “A couple of employees found the body stuffed inside the pod just before dawn. They were loading them for shipment to the treatment plant when they noticed the seal on this one had been broken. When they ran a security scan on it, the scan showed a large mass of organic matter.” They stopped before the pod. “So, they opened it and … voila!”
Matt fought nausea as he peeked over the side into the vile-smelling, garbage-filled container. Weeks upon weeks of trash had been stuffed into it, mashed down, and stuffed again. As if that wasn’t bad enough, smack dab in the middle of it, was Seales. Burlington was glad he hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning.
“Looks like somebody put a “people popper” through his mouth at close range,” Matt mused. “People-popper” was the name given to low-caliber ammunition popular in space. It was a fragmentation round that did little damage to structures, which was especially critical when dealing with pressurized domes and spaceship hulls. On the other hand, it could do severe damage to flesh and bone, due to the intense super-heating of the fragmented pieces.
It was a popular means of execution among the syndicates. A people popper through the mouth was a sign that the person had snitched, and he’d never be able to talk again. It also messed up the face to traumatize the family and ensure a closed casket funeral. That shit meant something to these animals. Everything had a meaning, symbolism to these fucks, even the way you killed somebody.
It all came back to him now. Matt knew where he’d heard the name. He sighed and shook his head. “Call the Feds,” he told the trooper. “They’ll wanna see this.”
“Yessir.”
“Tell them one of their canaries must’ve got made.”
“Hawkins, sir?” The trooper queried.
“Cutter helped him get his contract with the Authority through his union contacts. Once he got his hooks into the man, he wanted more and more. It was never enough. I’d heard the guy went to the Feds. Just wanted some relief. I guess he finally got some. Cutter put him out of his misery for good.” He waved his hand in front of his face at the noxious smell. “Get ‘im out of that shit.”
“Special Inspector Burlington!” A voice interrupted from behind him. He turned to see a young trooper standing beside his cruiser. “Sir! You need to get on your PDC! Got an active shooter at the hospital! Ten-double ought! Troopers down!”
***
The thing that came through the big pulsating light looked like a dragon on moonbeam. It was about twice the size of a hippopotamus, and the skin was mottled gray, the color of an old corpse. A short, stubby fat tail marked the end of the freakish body. It had a dragon-like neck and a broad head that exhibited both reptilian and avian features. The mouth was beak-like, and the three eyes on each side of its skull contained slitted pupils, like that of a snake. It had six arachnid-like legs, like that of a spider.
“What the fuck is that?” Tiger stood slack-jawed over the carcass, now smoking and riddled with pulse burns and laser fire. What kind of crazy house of horrors had they entered?
“Looks like a tarantula, a python and a pig had a ménage a trois!” Dee looked equally aghast.”
They stood with a dozen or so Troopers, mesmerized by the sight of the strange, alien creature.
“Get your asses away from
